A former CPS caseworker says the outcome of a child welfare case often has less to do with what a family did than with who knocked on the door. Lisa Border, who worked in child protective services for years and grew up in the system herself as a foster child who was later adopted, made the case in a recent public post. She was responding to forensic trial consultant Dean Tong, who she wrote agrees that parents should be allowed to tell their side of the story in court.
Her conclusion is blunt. Two families can live in identical conditions, she wrote, and one can lose their children for two years while the other has the case closed, depending only on which worker is assigned.
It doesn’t matter what the family does or doesn’t do in 99% of the cases. ITS THE WORKER AND THE AGENCY.
Lisa Border, former child welfare worker
Parents shut out of their own cases
Tong is a Florida-based consultant who has testified as an expert in at least 10 states and is often hired to critique CPS and police investigations and forensic interviews of children. Border wrote that he is saying what parents and advocates have said for decades: parents should be able to speak to the judge, enter their own evidence and call their own witnesses, whether or not their attorney is willing to.
Without that, Border argued, the court hears only the agency’s version of a family. She called that a one-sided view and a violation of due process for parents and children.
Untrained workers making the biggest calls
Border pointed to turnover and training as the root of the problem. Child welfare agencies lose about 30% of their caseworkers each year, according to the Child Welfare League of America, and Casey Family Programs puts the median caseworker tenure at about 1.8 years. Border wrote that many agencies, especially smaller counties, do not require full training until six months to a year after a worker is hired.
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That means, she wrote, the worker who removes a child may never have been trained in safety assessment at all. And a social work degree or license does not fix that, because those programs mostly prepare people for clinical and therapy settings, not for judging whether a child is safe at home.
She also said most workers are not trained in forensic interviewing and often ask children leading, closed-ended questions that confirm the allegation instead of letting the child explain in their own words. Training guides for CPS workers say the same thing: investigative interviews require specialized knowledge, and an interviewer can have less confidence in a child’s answers as questions become more leading.
Poverty treated as danger
Border wrote that most workers start the job wanting to help. Many are young, from middle-class or higher-income backgrounds, and have little experience with poverty or with cultures different from their own. That gap, she argued, shapes what they label unsafe.
She described a case she said she handled: a single mother with no beds, a few blankets and a nearly empty kitchen of rice, beans, eggs and ramen. A worker without that background might see neglect. Border saw a mother who had left a violent relationship, kept a roof over her children, made pallets from free comforters so they slept on padding, and was using food stamps, WIC, pantries and school meals. The worker had simply come at the end of the month, days before the family’s benefits reset.
Are those children unsafe? Absolutely not.
Lisa Border, former child welfare worker
Agencies are not supposed to remove children for poverty alone. Border wrote that they do anyway and then find another reason on paper, such as a parent’s mental health or “lack of motivation” to get services.
Why it matters
Border’s account matches what families tell Father’s Advocacy Network every week: the same facts can lead to opposite outcomes depending on the worker, and parents rarely get to answer the agency’s story in their own words. When a system gives that much power to its least-trained people and keeps parents from being heard, the result is not child safety. It is removal by chance. Families facing an investigation can read what rights parents have when CPS gets involved.
Key facts
- Lisa Border is a former CPS caseworker and former foster child who was adopted.
- She was responding to Dean Tong, a forensic trial consultant on child abuse allegations.
- Both say parents should be allowed to address the court and present their own evidence.
- Child welfare caseworker turnover runs about 30% a year (CWLA); median tenure is about 1.8 years (Casey Family Programs).
- Border says many agencies delay full training for six months to a year after hire.
- She says the same family conditions can lead to removal or a closed case depending on the assigned worker.
Sources
- Lisa Border, public Facebook post responding to Dean Tong
- Wikipedia — Dean Tong
- Binti — Social worker burnout in child welfare (citing CWLA and Casey Family Programs)
- Children’s Services Practice Notes — Conducting forensic interviews (2002)
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